North Texas constables are focusing on issuing traffic tickets even though their primary duty is to serve arrest warrants.

County constables in North Texas are ignoring their primary warrant serving responsibilities in order to issue speeding tickets. In Dallas County, constables have issued $49 million worth of citations even though 92,000 arrest warrants await service. Dallas County Constable Mike Dupree‘s precinct issues an average of 1700 traffic citations per month. His jurisdiction has 24,000 unserved warrants.Texas law establishes that constables have all the powers of a peace officer, but their sole duty is to issue warrants. “A constable shall execute and return as provided by law each process, warrant, and precept that is directed to the constable….” (Texas Code, Section 86.021)

In the late 1990s, DeSoto passed a resolution asking the Dallas County constables to stop running speed traps in the city. Constables have flouted the city council’s wishes and continue to ticket residents. Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price told investigators with KTVT-TV that he preferred having constables issue tickets because there isn’t enough space in jail for those with a warrant out for their arrest.
Read the rest of this entry »

Pennsylvania State Police turn to disguises to entrap motorists in Somerset County.

Pennsylvania State Police troopers are turning to disguises to ensnare motorists in Somerset County. Sergeant John Rock poses as a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation worker on Route 30 with a shovel in one hand and a radar gun in the other. Near Jennerstown, Rock and Trooper Loni Nist posed as a cowboy and cowgirl taking photos on a roadside while a marked police car hid, ready to pull over passing motorists. Last month, the two posed as a trooper couple stranded by a disabled SUV. Five police cruisers hid nearby to issue multiple speeding tickets.

“We’ve got a whole bunch of things up our sleeve,” Rock told the Tribune-Democrat newspaper with a laugh.

The disguises help troopers achieve quotas designed to increase the amount of revenue generated by police enforcement efforts. Rock has plans to expand the program, dubbed “Operation Sunset,” to cover even more roads in the area.

Source: (Tribune Democrat (Johnstown, PA), 3/18/2006)

Pennsylvania State Troopers receive monetary bounty for writing additional traffic tickets and are punished for speaking out against the system.

Pennsylvania State Police documents show that not only is there a system of monetary reward and punishment for state troopers based upon numeric ticket goals, there is a clear effort to prevent anyone from ever speaking about it. The first rule of a ticket quota is: there is no ticket quota.

The primary reason for the denial is a 1981 Pennsylvania law banning the practice of “directly or indirectly” suggesting that an individual police officer should issue “a certain number of traffic citations.”

In 2002, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette uncovered the creative methods that top police officials developed to avoid the letter of the law. The specific number of tickets that troopers must now meet is known as the “station average.” Each trooper must log the number of traffic stops and citations and if a trooper for any reason issues fewer tickets than his colleagues — the station average — he will be disciplined.

Our investigation shows that the practice continues and that those who issue more than the station average number of traffic tickets are given a fifty percent salary bonus in the form of construction overtime.

“If the station average is five tickets and you write ten, you’re getting overtime,” a trooper who requested anonymity explained to TheNewspaper.com. “The effect is to increase the average.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Taped evidence that Cottageville, South Carolina officials threatened to fire a police officer if he refused to generate revenue through traffic tickets.

A Cottageville, South Carolina police officer captured a conversation where the police chief and the mayor threatened to fire him unless he issued more traffic citations to generate revenue. On November 22, 2004, Mayor Bert Reeves and Police Chief Ray Taylor summoned Officer Jeremy Shomber to discuss his “poor performance.” Shomber’s wireless recorder used to document traffic stops had been activate at the time and the entire conversation was recorded. An anonymous source later provided the recording to the Charleston Post and Courier newspaper.

“The main priority right now when you’re driving is generating revenue,” Taylor said on the tape. “That’s in order to pay your position and yours is the lowest position. I’m just being point blank — technically, I’m not supposed to say that.”

Taylor and Reeves emphasized that details of the ticket quota — one ticket per hour — “needs to stay in this small circle.” Shomber, a rookie officer, objected to the idea that he should focus his police efforts solely on writing traffic citations, but Taylor and Reeves insisted that they would fire him if he did not comply.

“I don’t want to go around making people to be angry at me for doing something I shouldn’t be doing,” Shomber pleaded.

“If you’re not writing tickets, you’re not paying for yourself,” Mayor Reeves said. “You got a chip on your shoulder. As far as I’m concerned you’d be fired now. I want someone to play on my team…. If you got canned today, and you had to go out looking you’d come back in a couple months and say you know what, I had it made.”

In March, a Colleton County police officer ticketed Mayor Reeves for driving 103 MPH in a 55 zone. Listen to the exchange in a 2.8mb MP3 format audio file at the source link below.

Source: MP3 of Cottageville Quota Discussion (Cottageville Police, 7/3/2006)

Pendergrass, Georgia collects $1136 in ticket revenue for every resident.

Northeast Georgia’s number one speed trap for the past three years in a row is continuing to generate record profits from traffic fines. Last year, the Pendergrass Police Department collected $558,020 in fines with $312,636 in expenses leaving the department with a $245,384 net profit for the year.The two-square-mile town, through which U.S. 129 passes, has fewer than 500 residents. Police collect $1,136 in speeding tickets for every resident — an increase of $124 over the prior year’s figure. This amount far surpasses the revenue generated by the number two speed trap town of Arcade which pulled in just $264 in per capita ticket revenue. At number three, Madison County collected $118 in ticket revenue per capita.

“You could put Stevie Wonder out there, and he’d still give out as many tickets and make as many stops as we make,” Pendergrass Police Chief Rob Russell told the Athens Herald-Banner, which collected the statistics. “It’s just a function of our location.”

Source: (Athens Herald-Banner (GA), 10/8/2007)